Ava Wubbolding

 Dear Freshman Ava, 

Hey, it’s you, but a year older. I’m wrapping up my sophomore year right now, and I wish I could sit down with you and tell you everything I’ve been learning lately, especially from this class called The Art and Science of Human Flourishing that I think my freshman year self would benefit from. 

The biggest challenge was transitioning from high school to college. A whole new environment and routine without the comfort of your home, family, and friends. Although you built a routine of waking up, going to class, going to the dining hall, and back to the dorm, and repeat. There was no community within that routine. The self-isolation only made you feel more of an out-group, where you thought you didn’t belong on this campus. However, I’ve learned that community is essential. You can’t feel a true sense of belonging without making an effort to build relationships and understand the people around you. That’s where relational factors come in, they’re the personal and social connections that meet our basic need to belong, especially when they’re strong, consistent, long-lasting, and grounded in mutual care (Covarrubias, pp 4-5). I’d highly recommend getting out of your dorm and actively looking for opportunities to meet new people. Creating a sense of belonging comes from building relationships that support you and give you a sense of being part of a group. It’s about finding common ground, showing up consistently, and learning to rely on each other over time. This is an external resource that will help you overcome the challenge of feeling alone and disconnected at this big campus. 

I remember how challenging Biology 101 was for you; that class alone felt like a full-time job. I know the amount of stress it gives you and the anxiety attacks before each exam. All the late-night studying sessions and effort you put into the class just to do poorly on the exams. The anxiety attack comes from your sympathetic nervous nervousness in which your brain senses that the exams feel like an immediate threat, which puts your body on high alert. The sympathetic nervous system activated and released hormones that triggered a chain reaction, preparing you to either fight the situation or run away (Vigna, n.d., pp 4). The stress from classes, figuring out college, and where you’re going to live next year gave you emotional overload, where you experienced intense and overwhelming feelings that were hard to manage and inhibited your cognitive functioning. It was hard for you to focus on retaining new materials that hindered your performance in your exams (Vigna, n.d., pp 10). My tip for managing stress and overcoming challenges is through a process called resilience. Resilience is the ability to recover from challenges and manage the stress that comes with major life transitions (in your case, college). Rather than simply returning to a previous state after hardship, resilience allows individuals to move forward and grow from the experience (Vigna, n.d., pp 2). 

For starters, I know we have a negative mindset when it comes to new experiences. We think something will go wrong. What if I fail? What if they don’t like me? It's exhausting, and this negative thinking ultimately stops us from trying and adapting to new situations to begin with. Switching to a positive mindset will allow you to think more positively about your surroundings and experiences, which will give you the room to try new things without fear of failure. It helps you focus less on what could go wrong and more on what you could gain. Over time, this shift makes it easier to step outside your comfort zone and actually grow from those experiences.

Challenges are inevitable, but none of them are permanent. With the right support system and mindset, you can overcome any obstacle. I wish I had known what I know now, but I am really happy to share what I have learned. I hope I have equipped you with enough advice to help you have a smoother and more successful transition into college than I did. Every experience you go through will teach you something, even the difficult ones, and you will come out of them stronger than you started.

 

With Love, 

Your Future Self

Hi past Ava, I can also relate to your feelings of uncertainty when navigating new situations and the stress of having to confront change. I had been friends with the same people all throughout high school so having to "start over" felt intimidating. I felt alone in the beginning of freshman year but it wasn't until I started making the effort to talk to people that I felt I belonged. I agree with 'current Ava' and how relationships play a big role in belonging. In addition to getting out of your dorm I would recommend joining some clubs on campus which can help form your in-group which I learned about in our lecture on 3/25. I learned that members of close or maximal in-groups experience the group itself as an extension of their identity and central to survival. Forming relationships with like-minded people can also boost belonging. Belonging also has many other intrinsic benefits like buffering stress, boosting health, and increasing academic success. I learned this from when neuroscientist Richard Davidson came to give a guest lecture about belonging on 3/23. Now that you have some helpful tips for seeking out belonging, make sure you are looking out for others who might be struggling to belong. According to Belonging: The Science of Creating Connection and Bridging Divides with Geoffrey Cohen, "the experience of exclusion activates the same regions in the brain associated with he experience of physical pain...exclusion hurts" (0:30). No one likes to feel excluded so you should ask others to sit with you or join your clubs! In regards to Biology 101, I agree with 'current Ava' that resilience is key when it comes to navigating hard classes and tests.

For anyone else reading this blog, some advice I can give you when dealing with a hard class is to have a growth mindset, especially when it comes to learning new material. According to the growth mindset diagram from flourishing week, those with growth mindsets "persist in the face of setbacks, learn from criticism, and see effort as a path to mastery" (Dunne, Flourishing). This will help you reach high levels of achievement. I hope past Ava, and anyone else reading this, takes this advice because it not only goes for future college years, but also can help in the workplace and other social settings.

Natalie Cohen

Hi Ava, I remember being in a similar situation as you. After I moved out of my first apartment, I lacked connection and community, and that really made it hard for me to feel like I belonged in Madison. Like you, I often self-isolated. It was really hard to put myself out there. Sometimes I was confronted with rejection, but I had to remind myself to maintain a growth mindset and view rejection as redirection. I kept trying, and it eventually paid off. I now have a great group of friends who have made me feel like I belong here more than ever, and it has definitely increased my capacity for flourishing.

I also relate to feeling overwhelmed by overlapping stressors. In college, it always feels like there is something that needs your attention and energy, and it can be hard to catch a break. Managing stress is so important to flourishing during college. It's impossible to be stress-free all the time, but there is a difference between eustress and distress. The distinction is appraisal. If you view a stressor like an exam as a threat, it will cause distress, reducing your performance. Distress is likely what you were experiencing when you had an upcoming Biology 101 exam. Your arousal was too high, which led to the reduction in cognitive functioning you described. If you instead view stressors as challenges, you will experience eustress, which is known as “positive stress.” Eustress will help keep you motivated and aroused, improving your performance.

Mindset is everything. Changing my mindset is definitely something that has helped me to flourish as well. Asking yourself what could go right and what you can gain, instead of dwelling on what could go wrong and what you could lose is a great way to approach new experiences as opportunities. In retrospect, it is easy to see how all the chances I took paid off. I can think of so many instances in which I would have missed out on flourishing if I had decided to avoid a situation, just because it was scary or uncomfortable. Even when things did not go the way I wanted them too, I still gained knowledge and experience.

Vivian VanDyke